Natalie Portman Can Act and Direct—and Do It in Hebrew

Natalie Portman achieves a personal Hollywood milestone with her new movie, A Tale of Love and Darkness—she not only stars in the film, but it is also her debut as a director. The movie demonstrates her versatility for another reason, though: it’s entirely in Hebrew.

A* Tale of Love and Darkness,* out today, is based on the hefty memoir of the same name by Amos Oz, one of the pre-eminent writers of Israel, where Portman lived as a child. It “tells the story of a writer when a language is being born,” Portman told me while she was in London filming Alex Garland’sAnnihilation.

Growing up in a family of writers and academics, some eminent, Oz was immersed in the world of letters almost from birth. He even spent time hanging around the house of future Nobel Prize–winning author Shmuel Yosef Agnon, who features in the memoir. Oz came of age during the creation of the state of Israel and the concurrent revival of the Hebrew language. This gave him the chance, Portman mused, to “actually create words that become part of the national lexicon. The creation of the language is so fascinating, and Oz is correct in saying it’s the greatest accomplishment of the new state.”

It was important for Portman to show the mentality of Israelis during the creation of their state. “There was a wave of suicides after the war, and I think that part of what we don’t talk about when we talk about Israel is that it was a country in which every person had the trauma of the Holocaust,” she said. “There was a weird mix, that Oz talks about a lot, of the horror and fantasy of being an orphan. It was a group of young people trying to start their perfect society with no grown-ups around. Like a children’s book.”

Courtesy of Focus World.

The memoir, comprised of powerful vignettes rich in history, erudition, and poetry, doesn’t beg to be made into a movie. The vignettes are linked conceptually, rather than according to a plot. The conceptual links are clear in the book, as Oz is able to articulate them in exposition—but on film, the progression would likely seem just too meandering or random.

Portman read the memoir in both English and Hebrew, “sometimes side by side.” Its personal resonance helped surmount the difficulties of making it into a movie. “I picked up the book and it stayed with me in a deep way,” she said. “The combination of the love of language and the sort of family mythology seemed so familiar to what I had experienced growing up . . . combined with this patchwork structure that really appealed to me, going back and forth in time and space.”

Portman added, “Somehow I feel like that’s how my brain works more. Life to me doesn’t have a linear narrative. The experience of living doesn’t feel particularly linear. You have a thought about the past, then you think about the future, etcetera. Stuff doesn’t just resolve. For me, representing that felt so much closer to how I experience the world.”

In the movie, Portman’s vision is realized so fully that the word “patchwork” now seems irrelevant. Oz’s book overflows with masterful narrative sketches, but Portman selects from them thoughtfully, following her own artistic vision for their arrangement. Flashbacks preserve the nonlinearity of the book, while the chosen collection of scenes keeps viewers engaged narratively and visually.

February 1999

Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn, the one and only Jar Jar Binks, Natalie Portman as Queen Amidala, Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, R2-D2, George Lucas, C-3PO, and Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker on the Phantom Menace set in Tunisia.

February 2005

Droid masters Don Bies (right), with his son Ben, Matt Sloan, Zeynep “Zed” Selcuk, and Justin Dix take a break from helping craft the film’s mechanical men and glorified vacuum cleaners.

Photo: Photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the February 2005 issue.

February 2005

Anthony Daniels unmasked as droid C-3PO.

Photo: Photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the February 2005 issue.

February 1999

Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn, the one and only Jar Jar Binks, Natalie Portman as Queen Amidala, Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, R2-D2, George Lucas, C-3PO, and Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker on the Phantom Menace set in Tunisia.

February 1999

February 1999

(Top): A young Anakin Skywalker, played by Jake Lloyd, following Neeson’s Qui-Gon Jinn. (Center): Neeson on what would be a camel-like creature called an eopie. (Bottom): A pair of Jawas mug for the camera.

Photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the February 1999 issue.

February 1999

A motley assortment of Phantom Menace creatures pose near the set for Mos Espa, the Tatooine city where most of the movie's action takes place.

Photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the February 1999 issue.

March 2002

Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker and Natalie Portman as Amidala.

Photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the March 2000 cover.

March 2002

Christensen and Portman motor across Lake Como in Italy, the backdrop for filming scenes in Naboo, Amidala's home planet.

Photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the March 2000 issue.

March 2002

R2-D2 in a shipping crate with a running diary of its landmark moments on the inside of the crate's door, written by the model's builder.

Photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the March 2000 issue.

March 2002

Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu, a member of the Jedi Council and a hooded McGregor as Obi-Wan.

Photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the March 2000 issue.

March 2002

Jango Fett, left, the villainous bounty hunter and father of Boba Fett and a slimline battle droid, right.

Photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the March 2000 issue.

March 2002

McGregor takes flight against a blue-screen backdrop while Lucas sits behind the camera and Jackson waits his turn.

February 2005

On set in Sydney, Australia, Nick Gillard (far left), a martial-arts and weapons expert and former circus performer who has worked as a stunt coordinator on the first three Star Wars movies, watches over McGregor and Christensen enacting a lightsaber duel.

Photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the February 2005 issue.

February 2005

Anything you see in the Revenge of the Sith universe that's not part of the natural or digital world was created by Gavin Bocquet (seated on the floor at right, grinning), the film's production designer. His team includes (from left), Matt Connors, Peter Russell (on floor), Ian Gracie (arms crossed), Ken Barley (rear), Greg Hajdu, Colette Birrell, Steve Sansom, Phil Harvey, and Richard Roberts, shown lounging on the expansive bridge of a Trade Federation cruiser in the Sydney studio.

Photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the February 2005 issue.

February 2005

Costume designer Trisha Biggar checks the sleeve on a peacock dress worn by Portman in the role of Amidala of Naboo as she transitions from princess to senator. This gown is one of more than 500 costumes made for Revenge of the Sith by Biggar and her team, which includes, from left, Gillian Libbert, Ivo Coveney, Nicole Young, and Michael Mooney.